Billy Pierce, White Sox Power Pitcher in the 1950s, Dies at 88

Billy Pierce, the Chicago White Sox left-hander with a blazing fastball who became one of baseball’s leading pitchers of the 1950s, died on Friday in Palos Heights, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. He was 88.

The cause was gall bladder cancer, his son Robert said.

Pierce was only 5 feet 10 inches and 160 pounds or so, but his smooth mechanics enabled him to become a power pitcher with the team then known as the Go-Go Sox, which relied on pitching, speed and defense in an era dominated by the power-hitting Yankees.

Pitching for 18 major league seasons, Pierce won 211 games, was a seven-time All-Star, posted an American League-leading 1.97 E.R.A. in 1955 and amassed 1,999 strikeouts.

“Generations of White Sox fans lost one of their heroes,” Jerry Reinsdorf, the team’s owner, said on Friday.

During his 13 seasons with the White Sox, Pierce was often matched against the Yankees’ ace left-hander Whitey Ford, who was backed by the slugging of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, among others. The White Sox had few power hitters in lineups usually featuring Luis Aparicio at shortstop and Nellie Fox at second base, with Minnie Minoso in the outfield and Sherm Lollar at catcher.

“There was a time when I entered a game after our team had been shut down three games in a row,” Pierce told Major League Baseball’s website in 2013. “Early in the game, Louie got a hit, stole second. Nellie bunted him over to third and someone knocked him in. Nellie, who was my roommate on the road, came over to me and said, ‘O.K., roomie, you got your run, now hold it.’ ”

Pierce often did just that. Pitching out of an overhand delivery, relying on fastballs but mixing in curveballs, sliders and changeups, he was a two-time 20-game winner and threw 38 shutouts.

Facing the Washington Senators at the White Sox’s Comiskey Park on June 27, 1958, Pierce was one out away from a perfect game when the reserve catcher, Ed Fitz Gerald, delivered a pinch-hit double down the right-field line. He settled for a 3-0 victory, his third consecutive shutout.

The White Sox center fielder Jim Landis was impressed by Pierce’s equanimity in the face of disappointment.

Image

Giants players mob Billy Pierce after the final out in their pennant-winning victory over the Dodgers in 1962.CreditAssociated Press

“We went into the clubhouse and I looked at Billy, and there was no way in the world you could tell what happened,” Landis told Danny Peary in the oral history “We Played the Game” (1994). “He just got showered like he did every day and went home to be with his family. That’s strong, silent leadership.”

The White Sox beat out the Cleveland Indians and the third-place Yankees for the A.L. pennant in 1959, the first for the franchise since the infamous Black Sox of 1919. But Pierce, hampered by a hip injury late in the ’59 season, was relegated to relief duty as the White Sox lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a six-game World Series.

The White Sox traded Pierce to the San Francisco Giants before the 1962 season. He rejuvenated his career in the National League, going 16-6 with a shutout, and he earned a save in the ’62 Giants’ three-game playoff victory over the Dodgers. He started twice in the World Series, with a 1-1 record, as San Francisco lost to the Yankees in seven games.

Walter William Pierce was born on April 2, 1927, in Detroit, where his father was a pharmacist. He was a high school pitching star and impressed scouts while pitching in an amateur all-star game at the Polo Grounds in New York in 1944.

He signed with the Tigers and pitched briefly in the regular season as an 18-year-old rookie with the Detroit team that went on to defeat the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series, bringing him his only championship ring. After shuttling between the minors and the Tigers, Pierce was traded to the White Sox before the 1949 season.

He had a career record of 211-169, led the A.L. in complete games for three consecutive seasons and had an E.R.A. of 3.27.

Pierce, who lived in the Chicago suburb of Lemont, Ill., worked in sales for an envelope company after leaving baseball and raised funds for cancer research. The White Sox retired his No. 19 and erected a statue of him at their U.S. Cellular Field.

In addition to his son Robert, he is survived by his wife, Gloria; his son William; his daughter, Patricia Crowley; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Pierce was a mild-mannered sort who shunned night life and drinking.

In his early years with the White Sox, he received some advice from shortstop Luke Appling, who was nearing the end of a long Hall of Fame career.

“He said: ‘Kid, you’ve got to learn to drink scotch. It’s good for you and will give you strength,’ ” Pierce recalled in “We Played the Game.”

“So I drank a little. It was ugliest tasting stuff I had in my life. I thought it was medicine.”

But Pierce said: “I never had problems with other ballplayers, where if I didn’t drink I wasn’t part of the group. They understood that I’d rather be at the movies.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Billy Pierce, 88, Power Pitcher for White Sox. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe